The Plan

The Plan

We would sell our house in Baltimore and move to the Florida Keys where we would live aboard a boat. Ray would become a commercial fisherman and I would do art. I didn’t say it was a good plan, but it was an exciting one.

Our daughter, Josie, sitting on the companionway ladderof the “The Ever So Discreet” with her friend Clowny Boy.

The boat we bought to live on was an old wooden cruiser called “The Ever So Discreet.” We didn’t like the name either, but it is bad luck to change the name of a boat, so we were stuck. Off-and-on, the ESD would try to sink. It came closest one Christmas morning when we woke up to the sound of water filling up the bilge. Our neighbors in the marina had to wait to open presents as all of us raced to keep a forty-foot boat, one that had already taken on tons of water, from sinking. Luckily, we succeeded.

Ray had a second, smaller boat for fishing called the “Abraxas.” In case you don’t know, abraxas is the antidote to abracadabra. Josie and I fished with him for a while, but she was a baby and I got seasick so we stayed home and did a lot of swimming and snorkeling. Josie practically lived in the water. She knew every fish by name… Joe, Harry (just kidding).